How we put a brand together: Behind the scenes with Rach
What goes into designing & building a successful brand for a business
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This is the transcript from an Instagram Live in which Rachael went behind the scenes of the building of the Gulliver's Play Café brand. Find out what went into it and how we went about it below on this guided tour by Rachael...
Introduction
Hello, so, today I am going to be talking through the Gulliver's Play Café brand that we put together.
It's coming up to a year ago that they launched. And so I thought it would be really good to look back because this is a project that we have really enjoyed.
And so I've made a few notes. And I've also printed behind me, some of my moodboards and inspirations. And I just wanted to kind of share this so that we've got a bit more of a permanent record of this on our [Instagram] grid as well, just so that people can really understand the branding process and what goes into branding, what we mean by branding.
Because often people approach us and say, 'can you help craft or create a logo?'. And we understand why people want that. But there's actually quite a lot of other stuff that goes into thinking about a brand as well. So we wanted to share some insights and things about why branding is important and some of those different stages and things that we think through.
About the business
So Gulliver's is a play café and they are based in Cranbrook in Kent. And when they approached us to sort of create a brand, they had absolutely nothing, they had a dream. So they wanted to create a play café, they had bought their premises where they have their café now, but they didn't have anything else. And they had some ideas about what they kind of wanted it to be called and also feel like and we spent quite a lot of time with them thinking through lots of those kind of various things.
So it's owned by Seth and Katie Gulliver. So they wanted to name their business after themselves. And they wanted to go with Gulliver's Play Café. And their concept really for this store was; they've got two daughters; and Steph and Katie; Seth is a chef. And he'd worked for quite a lot of interesting big corporations and organisations including the National Trust. And Katie is a clinical psychologist and I went to school with Katie, so we've been friends for a while.
How the business came about
So it was really lovely to be able to collaborate and work with them on this particular project. And so the idea was that they wanted this café to be truly child-led. And they've been to quite a lot of various different cafés, where there was like a picket fence and some astroturf in the corner, and some sorry-looking toys, or also soft play centres. And if you're a parent, like me, you probably have a bit of a love hate relationship with soft play centres, because they have quite a lot of noise, and it's quite overstimulating, and they often have this awful smell. So they kind of wanted to steer completely away from that kind of concept and have something that was much more holistic.
What they wanted to do differently
So Seth with his chef background was fed up of going into places where they kind of just popped stuff in the microwave warmed up, and then sort of served up and said, this is lovely; this is some lovely food for your children - have some chicken dippers. And so they wanted to make everything fresh on site sourcing where possible local ingredients, and also have a real mind to allergens and allergies where they didn't want people to feel like; if you have a gluten intolerance or a nut allergy; that asking them to change things or you know, what's kind of it got in there? Is this going to be safe for me or for my child? They didn't want for people to feel like anything was too much.
So they really wanted to kind of have that in their mind and also try and make everything fresh, and gear absolutely everything around the children and make it just such a delightful place for children to want to come back. And so, and also what they what they also wanted to do was to start to then run various other courses and things. So Katie, as I said, is a clinical psychologist and she works a lot with children. And so they really wanted to look at things that helped to kind of make it not overly stimulating, but just a really enjoyable place for children to come with grown-ups and be in the space but also to help parents parent as well with parent craft sleep workshops. And also have, you know, foster that kind of sense of love of reading and things like that as well.
Where we started the branding
So that sounded brilliant. And what we did to begin with was we looked a lot at the strategy. So we did a number of Zoom calls, because they were in Kent, and we were in the Midlands. And when we kind of started talking really what we want to hear is absolutely everything about their hopes and their dreams for their business. So we looked at where were they going? What's their five year plan? How is everything going to work? How was this really going to be geared around children? What did they mean, when they said the things that they said.
We didn't want to assume anything, because obviously, when we come to a project, we all have past experiences and things that we all, you know, we all perceive and things that we think are sort of important, or we can read, we can interpret things in a way that perhaps isn't actually very accurate. So we go round again, and again, and again, refining, gaining clarity. And it's quite an iterative process of saying, when you said this, what did you mean? Can you explain that? What, what does this kind of look like? So we don't want to assume anything, we really want to understand what people's vision is, and where they're going and not layer over it, our own thoughts, or things that we kind of think, but also we want to really help people to dream and to think more about their business and have that as a really kind of focus time where people can be really inspired and think through things.
And also we can suggest other things as well, to people to say, Have you thought of this? Or have you considered maybe looking at various other things. And so when we started talking with Seth and Katie, they had a strapline and we said, OK, not quite sure about that, it doesn't feel right, based on what you've said.
Keywords & how people should feel
And so we also were talking quite a lot about things that maybe they had kind of felt and they said, we've kind of liked it to be like a bit of an Alice in Wonderland place. And so when we sort of explored and started to unpack that what they really meant by that was somewhere that kind of felt quite magical, and really enjoyable, and was slightly abstract and different, not necessarily mystical, or a bit wacky off the wall.
And so it was good to just sort of clarify what they really meant by some of the things that they meant. And so what we then started to do was, talk to them about how they wanted people to feel when they engaged in that space. And we started to get them to sort of write down what a lot of those words words can key words that really they wanted to, for people to feel and experience when they kind of came into the place so that all the visual stuff that we were going to start to build around that really aligned with that, because there's nothing worse than I want it to feel like this. And then actually what you're served up looks quite different.
And so we started talking, and I'll show you some of those words in a minute. But we really landed on, I guess, sort of, yeah, a few words, we started circling back to again, and again, we wanted it to be fun, we wanted it to be a positive place, a place that kind of where parents could be present and not on their phones and really engaged with their children and have that kind of one to one, or one to three, if you're like me. And sort of space within that café, we and they also wanted the children to feel really safe.
The importance of values
They wanted it to feel like it was really local and really embedded in the community and that they were really serving the local town that the café sits in. And also the children had freedom to kind of either join in with things or check that freedom to sort of play on their own. And so Seth had this idea of having a Lego bar in there. And they knew quite a lot of things that they wanted to have toys that were locally produced by a company that was just up the road that make beautiful wooden toys, as well. So I will just show you now some of the some of the things that we started to look out. And I will try and turn my camera around. Okay.
So these were lots of the words that we sort of kept coming back to and this kind of timeless, fun, witty, and interactive place a place where you could chat where you kind of felt safe to chat to the people who work in there and the staff and that that was gonna feel really, really good. And we as we started to sort of look at things and refine the vision. What we kind of came back to was a to create a truly child-focussed café that fosters healthy bodies and healthy minds. And so we wanted people to just really feel nurtured and nourished as well through everything that we do.
The personality of the brand
And so we started to kind of look at the language and things like that. So the brand statement that we came up with is 'Gulliver's play café makes delicious fresh food for kids and grownups that will tantalise your taste buds. It's a place to play, relax, meet and make memories'. And so as we kind of got further and further in, and we looked at the benefits, so some of those were emotional, and some of those were physical. So a chef-led kitchen, making delicious, fresh food. With ingredients from local suppliers, we decided they decided not on organic in the end, but to use organic where possible.
A space to connect chat enjoy time together. And then why would people sort of believe everything they wanted to say? They wanted to foster a sense of 'Happy News', they're locals, they wanted to work with other local businesses. They wanted it to be a positive and relaxing space. And a place where really actually everybody was learning something. And I'll come back to that a bit later, particularly around the loyalty card.
And so the personality of the Gulliver's brand was fun, innocent, positive, timeless, that kind of nostalgic sense, a little bit quirky, chatty, witty, and interactive. And the values really that they kind of came back to with it. They wanted to be child focused, good for you and for the planet, a place to learn new things, and also to celebrate things in life. And so what we came back to again and again, that we ended up with was that it really at the heart of the goal of his brand, they wanted it to be a place where memories are made. And so what we did was we kind of we ditched the former strapline and we went with where memories are made. I think that's it, but we'll have a look on some of the other sheets. And so that's kind of, yeah, where we sort of got to with looking and really sort of focusing in on those.
Settling on a brand archetype
And then after that, we started to really kind of flesh out the personality of the brand. And some of you in your line of work, whatever might have come across the 12 kinds of characteristics [brand archetypes]. And I'm gonna do a blog post a little bit more on those, but we ended up landing on the innocent being the brand kind of character. And they're based on Jung's kind of theory of this kind of 12 sort of archetypes that exist. And they're things like the sage, the magician, the lovers, the caregiver, the guy next, or the girl next door. What else, the everyday guy? Yeah, so there's 12 different sort of personality types.
And we landed in the end on the innocent. And so the innocent is naturally optimistic and hopeful. They can only see the good in people in life, they enjoy the simple things, they stopped him out, smell the roses and smile at strangers. They're pure and heart and action, slow to judge quick to forgive free of corruption. And the innocent seeks harmony in the world. And overall, their goal is to be happy. And the glass is sort of half full. And so we really kind of latched on to that kind of brand characteristic.
Brand voice & seeing the brand through a lens
And then started to look through that lens when we looked at everything to do with the brand, which is really, really helpful because it helps sort of drive decision making. And that really also then starts to inform the tone of voice. So when we started to look at the tone of voice, the persona we wanted it to be. So that's all the written content on the website, and how they talk about things in marketing and social media was to be friendly, warm and playful, the tone to be personal, humble and honest. The purpose was to educate, entertain, and to sell. And the language was to be simple, inclusive and open.
And so really, every time they write or kind of think about anything to do with their brand - Seth and Katie - we've encouraged them to sort of look through this lens, and to try and write things through the innocent archetype. And to make sure that they have a consistent brand voice that really sort of encompasses those things and not to deviate away from that, because that's really important, and it will help you stand out some brilliant, innocent archetypes would be things like innocent smoothies. And I just love how they kind of very Yeah, humorously write about their brand, but in a really innocent way. It's really nice as well with looking at their copy and how they sort of put things together on their website. And that gave us quite a lot of inspiration.
Consistency in language & terminology
And so then we sort of started to look more about their name and, and terminology. So just really simple things like calling, being consistent or calling it Gulliver's Play Café or Gulliver's not calling it, the play café, the caffe, the coffee shop, the play space, the play venue. So being really clear about how you talk about your brand, and the type of wording that you use, is really important.
And also, as we started to look at things, we decided that because we wanted it to be child focus, kids call adults grown ups. And so we wanted to use that kind of language, the language that children would use to describe big people that they're with. And also grownups is really inclusive, it's not parents, you know, it's so people who perhaps care for the children or grandparents grown ups is a really lovely catch-all phrase. so that people can feel sort of quite included in that. And we decided that kids would be used where possible, but children is okay, and to decide on what sort of felt right in the context. So that's kind of where we got to with looking at that. And it's really important to be really consistent. And so then we started to move board various things. And we really loved the kind of this sort of style of writing that feels quite fun and energetic. And we really liked lots of the colours that we assimilated here.
Building out brand touchpoints
And, and one thing that I felt quite strongly on was that they really should engage a sign writer to really sort of drive home that kind of nostalgic, art really, and that creative art to really sort of express their brand in a in a in a way that's going to last for a long time. And we've got some brilliant sort of ideas here - for me - a rick rack pattern, and that sort of started to inform things going forward. And you'll see that in some of the various and bits and pieces that we pulled together.
And so then we started to sort of sketch out the Gulliver's name on what that could potentially start to look like drawing on that style of writing. And actually, Seth and Katie, just really, as I started to sort of put it together, they just really loved it. And as they showed it to friends and family, they said, yeah, that's, that's for us. That's the logo. And I didn't have to do sort of too much additional work sort of, on that, to refine that to get that to a place that they were happy with.
And so we started to then sort of develop that and think about how it might start to look and appear elsewhere. And it's probably worth saying that, that doesn't, that doesn't always happen. A lot of the time, people when they want to logo, they want to see options. And they want to see different styles and different things that you've thought about. But in this particular instance, what we sort of put together quite quickly, they just absolutely loved and they didn't, it didn't need too much refinement, which was just really nice.
The colour palette
And so then we started to pull together the colour palette, which is quite fresh, and quite clean and quite spring like really sort of quite vivid colours, almost primary, but not Not quite. So obviously, we've got like a red, a blue and a yellow. And they sort of, I guess these two sort of feel quite primary This one is sort of, it's more orangey red than it is sort of like a really bright red. And then we sort of cooled it down a bit with some of these teal colours, so just knocking, so it's more of a blue green banana than a real green. And then we introduce the pink. And if you want to read sort of more upon colours and colour psychology, I'd really recommend looking at the brand stylist resources on colour psychology. That's a framework that makes a lot of sense to me. And we also look quite a lot at what she's based on is Angela Wright's kind of psychology theory. And that is a book that we read, often when we're looking at colour and how to put a pair colour together. So that would be worth looking at.
Allowing customers to see themselves in the brand
And so what we then started to do was to look at - you can see here, I've sort of sketched out some faces; Seth and Katie were quite keen that everybody should be able to see themselves in the brand. And so we've got these very character for sort of colourful. Yeah, sort of faces that aren't really they're not really defined. They're quite naive. And so we get we really sort of that's sort of how we sort of wanted to start to sort of bring additional sort of innocent personality again into the brand was sort of through that sort of naive, almost childlike drawn facial expression.
Looking at typography
And then the typography, we wanted to make it as legible as possible. But we have got a sort of like a fun script writing that similar-ish to sort of that pre-cursive writing that is used in schools. But again, sort of leaning into that more sort of childlike and just quite simple and easy to read form. And just making sure things like where possible things like in the copy, having an a that doesn't have this at the top, because obviously, in school, it's much more expressed like that. So those kind of subtle details are sort of quite important when you're thinking about who your target audience is. And so that's what we wanted to make sure that we did with the typography.
Commissioning photography and imagery
And then we started to look more at photography and imagery for people and again, wanting to make sure that it's representative and diverse, and also that the food looked just interesting, and really beautifully sort of put together. And so they were sort of really, really happy with that. But actually, we haven't leant too much into photography. In this way, we have gone more in the brand as a brand sort of came together with more sort of faces and, and things like that.
Signwriting & wayfaring
Then sort of moving on to the outside of the shop, we - I actually trained at university as an architect. So it's always fun when I get to sort of use my design skill. So we did a scale drawing of the outside of the shop, and started to just put this onto that the signwriter could see what he needed to do and what that was going to look like. And then you can see here as Katie and Seth and their daughters and the signwriters been to the shop; I think this is just before it opened, and then obviously lockdown happened. So it's been a bit of a stressful time for them. But I know that they've been able to open and do takeaways and things like that. But yeah, so that's the outside of the play café there. And the the signwriters called The A Board Dude, and he did a lovely, lovely job. They were super impressed with what he did.
Feeding into the website
So yeah, so then we started to look more at the website and how we're going to put that together. And we really liked the idea of there being some movement. And I think at the time that I did this, there was some new BBC 2 idents. And I was really inspired by one of the ones which was an odd been one where they had googly eyes, appearance and slime. And I thought that was brilliant. So we did our own sort of version of that on the on the website where some googly eyes sort of open and look around and things like that.
Creating a library of assets
And then we started to sort of create, I guess really like a library have patterns and illustrations for them to be able to talk about different events, books, bank holidays, bonfire nights being a breastfeeding friendly space, no 'pop and ping', no microwave meals. And yeah, just all the various things that are important, I guess, for children, Christmas school holidays, international Children's Day parties and party house, things that children can do. Local fruit picking season cherries are a huge deal around where they are. And again, looking at our allergies and making sure that people know that they are allergy wise there.
Doing everything through the eyes of the audience
So that's that, I'll just bring you over to here and show you how we started to then visualise the brand. So obviously, these are - I'll just zoom out so you can see them all together. These are sort of menu designs that we started to look through. And we also thought about what would be sort of important I guess, to put on the tables and what people needed to see. What I really loved was set up Seth's idea for a loyalty card. Where we we kind of went with 'these are NOT for grownups'. And so the loyalty card actually is completely geared around children.
And when they sort of teach the staff something new, and again, fostering the idea of learning, they get a sticker, and what child does not love a sticker? And I've got some stickers here. So these are some of the tiny stickers that they can stick on their loyalty card. They were super fun to look at those. And yeah, I've just loved that kind of sense of the staff wanting to learn new things as well. They wanted to sort of make it a happy place to kind of come and we introduce them to the Emily Cox head happy newspapers, I think they've got a subscription of those have kids can read about brilliant things happening in the world that is really positive.
Considering every point a customer comes into contact with
And again, starting to just look at you know how the brand works across applications. So things like gift vouchers, coffee cups, takeaway things. What children can do at the tables is became quite important as well as they weren't allowed to play with toys so much because of COVID. So we created an activity sheet for them so that they could interact and look at that. And that was my initial sketch there. And, yeah, just making sure that all all the brand touch points kind of work together. And here we bought in the rickrack border.
And then also, we suggested that they also make their own Gulliver's pack of cards. So that was really fun. And I have, I have a pack of cards right here. And they're just such a lovely thing to be able to have. So yes, so they all got designed. And this is the box, which is really cool. The little characters there. Open me. And then when you open it up, I think it says boom.
So that was really, I thought was really, really fun. And then just again, looking at patterns, like thinking about window displays, printing wrapping paper, to be able to wrap things to put in the big window. Just again, making sure that yeah, all of the icons and things just are really clear on the, on their menus and making sure that there's a child menu and an adult menu as well.
Summary of the branding process
So that's kind of yeah, that's quite, that's would be the process, I guess, of what we started to look at. So thinking strategy first, then ideation, logo concept, bringing the brand together with illustration, colour, typography, and photo direction, and then commissioning the asset. So the SignWriting, the website, illustrations, and then all of the touch points that will be in the physical space.
Other comments & thoughts
And so I think that is, I don't know, if I had sort of anything else I particularly sort of wanted to sort of draw her out, sort of with within all of that. But if you've got any questions, I'd be really happy to answer that.
I think one of the things to say is we started working on this in November 2019. And then the brand launched in March. So it did take us sort of a good three, obviously, Christmas was sort of in the midst of that. But yeah, it took us a good sort of three and a half, four months really to think about the strategy, pull the concept together, create the website, and just make sure that everything was together for the brand that we created.
And I think taking time is, is a really important thing. When you're sort of considering branding. Often people say to me, I really want this to be done and I want it to be done next month, can you do it? And I think if you have the thinking time to think about it, that's, that's great. But for most people, myself included, actually sometimes when they come back to things, they just sometimes don't feel right. Or you can think actually, I need to just think on that. And I need to maybe talk to other people who know me as well to just really check that actually, the decisions that I'm making are important because obviously branding websites and things like that they're a really, really big investment. And you want to get that right, because actually, that's going to set you up for success for growing your, for growing your business and for making sure that you have everything that you need in place for for launch, as well.
How we work on branding at Wildings Studio
So these guys in particular, they they didn't have anything. So we started completely from scratch. But we often get asked to sort of come in on branding projects and tweak and refine things to work out what isn't quite feeling right and rectify that so that it does, it does start to feel right. So yeah, we're not sort of like a 'we only do this' sort of design studio. And we are small, it's me and Simon and we bring in other people where we need to only work with others to to be able to do that like signwriter and working with printers or copywriters, and photographers and other sort of creatives, but also things kind of take time because it's us doing work.
And we like we like to be in a small studio where we can be really personal and we feel like that's quite important that and yeah, I think probably I'll let you finish there, but I hope that you've kind of been joyed looking a bit more at this brand. And sorry, seeing a little bit more a kind of about what sort of went into it and what we were thinking and why we were thinking the things that we did.
And also why that strategy at the beginning is just so so important. Because actually, without that, you're kind of guessing you need to know who your customers are, you need to know what they care about, you need to know, do they care about if it's from a local producer? Do they want to have environmentally like sourced paper? Do they not? Do they care about these things? Do they not care about those things? So it's really important to understand that so that when it comes to commission, things like your menus, whether or not that's really important to your customer base to know whether or not it's a reusable thing, whether it's sustainably sourced paper, whether or not and what you're doing, how big is your carbon footprint, these are all sort of things that are kind of really important and you and actually getting that strategy in place to really understand what what ticks what sort of within your customer and what their values are, you want to be able to chime in with them. And to be able to understand that so that people go, Oh, I just get this and I love it. And they want to kind of come back again and again and again.
The final word
So yes, that is this project, it is, as I say one of my favourites because and it was such a joy to put together because I knew Katie and I was at school with her. And yeah, if you have any questions, please do ask. It's me and Simon, we, you know, send us a direct message. We're completely fine with that. And you know, our passion really is to see businesses thrive and we want to set people up for success. So if you have questions do just ask us we don't we don't mind that we Yeah, this is what we love, and we really want to serve our community. So thanks so much for joining me today. And I will see you soon.
I've got to work out how to turn this [Instagram] Live off now...
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